Saturday I wll ride the Portland Century as part of my build-up for Cycle Oregon. 102 miles with 4000' of climbing. The Proflie looks like a shark's mouth, no big climbs but a lot. Several at 9-10%, one of about 300 feet. I'll ride it fixed and try to do as many of those climbs as possible in 43-17 to save a lot of stops. (I'll be able to flip the wheel to a 22 and have a 14 if I want it.)

While I was in the PC website, I downloaded the list of turns. Between turns and significant road changes, there are around 120 lines of instruction! They do tell you distance to the next one and accumulated distance, so the instructions appear to be very good, but 120 lines? They say the route is scenic, but will anyone see anything but their turn list, be it hardcopy or Garmin? Or the pavement for painted arrows.

That's a turn or change every 7/8ths of a mile or less than every 3 minutes.

I'm expecting this to be a very hard day. 30 mile round trip to the ride, then all those turns and who knows how many stops or near stops plus certainly a few missed turns and backtracks. That's before we even talk about all the uphills. Good thing is this is Portland Century where you are expected to eat your way around the course and they feed you well. Excellent meal at the finish to get me the 15 miles home.

Ben, I tend to ignore the cue sheets unless I get lost and have to find out where I am. Usually, I just follow the crowd. On an MS ride, a bunch of us did miss a slight left one time and took the sharp left, but we found our way and rejoined the group. Have fun on the ride! smokey